Vitamin D Levels in Blood May Help Predict Risk of MS

| Newsline

Examining vitamin D levels in the blood may help predict whether a person is at risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a large new study. “There have only been a few small studies suggesting that levels of vitamin D in the blood can predict risk,” said study author Kassandra Munger, ScD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “Our study, involving a large number of women, suggests that correcting vitamin D deficiency in young and middle-age women may reduce their future risk of MS.”

For the study, researchers used a repository of blood samples from more than 800,000 women in Finland, taken as part of prenatal testing. Then the researchers identified 1,092 women who were diagnosed with MS an average of nine years after giving the blood samples. They were compared to 2,123 women who did not develop the disease.